Sam the Snack Man

After fifteen years of marriage, you think you know someone. And you do, in a way. You know their habit of sneezing -just once- when they get out of the shower. You know the curve of their back when you're their big spoon. You can predict with precision the number of sparse hairs on their chin by the time five o'clock rolls around. But you can never really know someone, can you?

Of course, I thought I did know this someone. Just once in my forty-five years on this planet, I thought I finally had it figured out. I had found my person. After decades of swimming upstream, I had stopped struggling against the tide. I had spent thirty years in the closet, but I was getting sick of my skeletons. Dried and brittle from years of neglect, I got bored of having to dust them off every time I had an existential crisis. I thought of hiring a cleaner, then remembered the closet was a metaphor. It certainly felt real, though. Dark, disorganized, and in great need of sorting through. I decided to go to a therapist instead.

I'm pretty sure I'm the first of my family to ever spill their guts to a complete stranger. In an office, anyway. Yapping to the regulars at the country club's nineteenth hole didn't count. My parents were WASPS. Let's just say if suppressing your emotions were an Olympic sport, they would have both broken world records. I sometimes wish it were...maybe I would've gone to college on an athletic scholarship. Instead, I drowned myself in student loan debt like everyone else. Most of my family was spared the humiliation of compound interest payments, but these were the ones who had the sense to keep their skeletons in their closet. I made the foolish mistake of sharing mine, and the well of family wealth ran dry.

It was a bit of an adjustment. Imagine going from a waterfall to a full-on drought. One minute, there are resources aplenty, the next you’re left seriously considering drinking your own urine for sustenance. Thankfully for me, it was just selling my plasma. Only a marginally more attractive alternative.

The donation center was a nondescript sky blue, with manicured rosebushes along the perimeter. Inside, the walls a pale green. Perhaps a subtle nod to the reason most of us were there: green, money, cash, dinero. Enough to scrape together dinner and rent, until the next twenty-eight days came around and we could donate all over again.

The chairs had curves at the end. It was like the entire room was filled with rows of recliners and we were all waiting for the game to start. I just wish I had remembered to bring snacks. My nurse thankfully took pity on me.

“First time?” he questioned with a grin, pulling out a small granola bar from his bag. I took it eagerly, and mumbled “thanks” between chews. “Is it that obvious?”

“Oh honey, I can always spot new blood”. He winked, as if his terrible pun needed any more emphasis.

“My regulars call me Sam the Snack Man.” “Don’t tell the super. She’s a bit of a see-you-next-Tuesday.”

“I’m Luke”. “It’ll be our secret then.”

And that was it. The beginning of our story. Fifteen years later, we still have secrets. This one I discovered in our bathroom. It too, was painted green. Sam and I had picked out the shade together, along with the wicker waste basket and wrought iron towel rack. He said if we were going to get monogrammed towels, we had to have a piece worthy of holding them. He was always attentive to the little things, and careful to keep things neatly in their place.

Maybe his attention to detail is how he got away with it for so long…

But a small white box in the bin was his undoing.

I caught it out of the corner of my eye. We hadn’t had guests in a while, so I knew it wasn’t someone else’s. Sam got an earful once when I found an empty box of cigarettes in the trash, only to find out they were his Mother’s Lucky Strikes. This was not that.

I reached my hand into the trash, reading ‘Truvada, 300mg’ typed in clear English on the box. My heart plummeted into my stomach. Truvada: a lie I could simply not fathom.

I steadied myself on the tile, and carried the box with me to the bedroom.

“What is this?!” I cried.

The color drained from Sam’s face.

“You have AIDS?!” “How could you have—” “What did you—” “When were you—”?!

Sam interrupted my flurry of incoherency. “It’s not what you’re thinking, Luke.”

“I don’t know what to think, Sam! How could you have kept something like this from me?!”

Sam opened his mouth to protest, but decided against it.

“Sit,” he motioned.

“I had a blood transfusion about twenty years ago.” “Terrible car accident, and I was medevac’d to the nearest hospital.” “There was a blood shortage, and I guess they must have skimped a bit on their quality control. I don’t really know what happened. They told me it was really rare for this to happen, but it does happen. I guess I was just that one in a million case, you know?”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I could feel my pulse quicken and the veins throb in my temples.

“How could you lie about something like this?!” “We share a bed for God’s sake! I know it was my idea to nix the condoms after we were exclusive, but Jesus, if I had known I— ”.

“There’s no way you could have known, and that’s how I wanted it to be.” “I didn’t want you to see me any differently.”

“But it’s not about just you, Sam.” “This affects me too.” “And for the record, I do see you differently.” “Once upon a time, you were my Sam the Snack Man. But now you’re Sam the Storyteller. The Spinner of Tales”.

I’m gay, and I've finally dusted off my skeletons. I didn't "choose" to be this way any more so than someone chooses to be born with the gene that makes cilantro taste like soap. It’s just the way I am. I know who I am, but I don’t know what to think anymore. After fifteen years of marriage, you think you know someone. But did I ever really know them?